The idea of programmatically managing infrastructure provides capabilities to scale, manage and control technology much more effectively than can be achieved through manual methods. But the use of APIs means so much more than simply providing an interface that can be automated. APIs introduce greater efficiency and accountability into storage platforms. We look at how… Read more »

During our coffee talks at HPE Discover 2018, statements were made that claimed HPE 3PAR storage platforms wouldn’t benefit much from going to NVMe at the back end. Instead, the statement of direction is to use storage-class memory as a platform accelerator. I’ve been trying to understand why HPE isn’t making the move at this… Read more »

As the slowest part of the computing architecture, persistent storage is in a constant battle to improve performance. That goal has moved from being focused on throughput a few decades ago to one of reducing latency as low as possible. To that end, NVM Express and NVMe over Fabrics have become an area of focus… Read more »

We’re moving to a multi-cloud world, there’s no doubting it. I hear from end users and vendors alike that increasingly, IT organisations are looking to use on-premises and multiple cloud service providers. From an operational perspective, how do we protect and maintain ongoing access to data and applications? What’s the right strategy for dealing with… Read more »

In September 2018, NetApp acquired a little-known cloud services company called StackPointCloud. StackPoint offers a managed Kubernetes service that enables customers to build Kubernetes clusters across a range of public cloud providers. Why would NetApp want to acquire this technology and where could it be used? Containerisation First of all, let’s take a step back… Read more »

As we move into 2019, storage performance becomes more important than ever. At the media level, vendors are pushing the boundaries with fast solid-state technologies like NAND flash and 3D-Xpoint. These products provide performance capabilities we’ve never seen before. Storage system vendors then take components and build storage solutions, either as bespoke hardware or part… Read more »

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Towards the end of 2018, I was invited to attend HPE Discover in Madrid. In previous years, this has been a great opportunity to get up to speed on the storage strategy the HPE Storage team is following. What did we learn this year? Intelligent Storage Platform The message being broadcast for the last year… Read more »

What a week it’s been in the data storage industry. First Rubrik Inc announced an E-series round of funding totalling $261 million. This was followed barely 24 hours later by Veeam Software announcing it had raised $500 million in what seems to be regarded as an unexpected move. Across Actifio, Cohesity, Rubrik and Veeam, venture… Read more »

This week, Amazon Web Services announced the availability of Amazon DocumentDB, a MongoDB-compatible document database. For AWS at least, the database market has been heating up recently. With so many offerings to choose from, are databases the next land-grab for the public cloud? DocumentDB Let’s look first at the announcement of Amazon DocumentDB. This new… Read more »

Jim Kelly (The Storage Buddhist blog) has an interesting post talking about using IBM’s San Volume Controller (SVC) in front of their new FlashSystem arrays to create a scale-out all-flash solution. The overhead is a mere 100 microseconds, which as Jim indicates still makes a hybrid SVC/FlashSystem faster than many array solutions on the market…. Read more »

By now the news will be out – Lenovo are buying IBM’s X Server business. But what would happen if things had been different and EMC made the first move? I’m sure many of you are thinking that this strategy would make no sense, but bear with me for a moment. Firstly let’s look at… Read more »

Today I managed to write about 90% of a blog post talking about value and traditional storage arrays – train journeys are pretty good for that sort of thing (and for taking your mind off the other passengers). However having read some of the comments regarding Backblaze’s latest blog post on their drive reliability, I… Read more »

With effect from 1st January 2014, VMware have announced that their Virsto acquisition is end of life and no longer available for purchase. The brief statement released by the company indicates that support will continue until September 2015. I first looked at Virsto in 2011 with a brief review in a post that compared the… Read more »

Earlier this week I was reading an article in the UK’s Computing magazine, which listed research on key priorities for businesses over the next three years. The top three items for research were listed as Storage Virtualisation, Desktop Virtualisation and solid state drives (SSDs). I was interested that 56% of respondents said they were looking… Read more »

George Crump makes some interesting comments in his recent article on whether today’s breed of all-flash storage arrays could survive for 10 years in the data centre. Whilst the logic of his comments make sense, I think there’s little desire to be using today’s all flash devices in 10 years’ time. There’s no reason to… Read more »

Disclaimer – this post does not constitute financial advice in any way and all information provided is purely for illustrative purposes. Last Friday, which was the 13th and clearly not unlucky for some, Nimble Storage Inc floated on the New York Stock Exchange at an opening price of $21. The shares did well, closing at… Read more »

It’s interesting reading the comments that we’re added to my post of last week, discussing the summary of all flash arrays, initially started by Vaughn Stewart and continued by HP storage guy Calvin Zito. Unsurprisingly, most of the negativity came from EMC and their resellers, who are defending a late entrance into the market. They… Read more »

With much anticipation, EMC has finally gone GA on their all-flash array, XtremIO, based on the former company of the same name they acquired in May 2012. The eighteen months that have elapsed since then has seen the rise of an number of competitors and a lot of rumour, discussion and teaser presentations from EMC… Read more »